"It's not that repetition as a whole is bad. It's that mindless repetition is bad." "A lot of students cram - they wait until the last minute, then in one evening, they repeat the information again and again. But research shows this isn't good for long term memory. It may allow you to do okay on that test the next day, but then on the final, you won't retain as much information, and then the next year, when you need the information for the next level course, it won't be there.

"There's some really <a href="http://mindsetonline.com/">interesting work by Carol Dweck </a>, at Stanford. She's shown that students tend to have one of two mindsets about learning. "One is a fixed learning model. It says, 'I have a certain amount of talent for this topic - say, chemistry or physics - and I'll do well until I hit that limit. Past that, it's too hard for me, and I'm not going to do well.' The other mindset is a growth mindset. It says that learning involves using effective strategies, putting aside time to do the work, and engaging in the process, all of which help you gradually increase your capacity for a topic.

The way most students study makes no sense. That's the conclusion of Washington University in St. Louis psychologists Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel - who've spent a combined 80 years studying learning and memory, and recently distilled their findings with novelist Peter Brown in the book Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning .

Re-reading is inefficient. Here are 8 tips for studying smarter.

Chafik Issam